Analysis of nonlinear wave equations and applications in

engineering
James Colliander (University of Toronto)
Michael I. Weinstein (Columbia University)
Vadim Zharnitsky (University of Illinois )
August 9August 14, 2009

Overview of the Field

Nonlinear dispersive wave equations arise naturally in scientific and engineering fields such as fluid dynamics,
electromagnetic theory, quantum mechanics, optical communication, nonlinear optics etc. Many important
questions (both in theory and applications) are related to the interaction of two effects: energy spreading
(dispersion, diffraction) and energy concentrating (nonlinear self-trapping, defect modes,. . . ) mechanisms.
For example, in Korteweg-deVries equation (KdV)
ut = uux + uxxx ,
which describes propagation of long waves in shallow water, the term uux steepens the wave and causes it
to break, while the term uxxx tends to broaden the wave and smoothes the wave profile. For the so-called
soliton solution, which is a localized wave that propagates without distortion, these two effects balance each
other. There are several other fundamental equations ( nonlinear Schrodinger / Gross-Pitaevskii (NLS / GP),
nonlinear Klein-Gordon equations (NLKG)) and their modifications which naturally arise in applications
and in which similar balance of nonlinearity and dispersion gives rise to coherent structures (solitary waves,
vortices, very long-lived meta-stable states). The following are central issues in the field:
Well-posedness of nonlinear dispersive equations.
Stability of coherent structures such as solitary waves.
Interaction among coherent structures.
In the past 2-3 decades, new techniques based on harmonic analysis, variational methods, and dynamical
systems have advanced our knowledge in all three directions. However, despite relations between the above
questions, there has not been sufficiently strong interaction between them. One of the goals of this workshop
was to bring together researchers who would benefit from sharing the ideas. One way in which we achieved
such interactions was through two tutorials, which bridged scientific communities:
(I) Derivations of the nonlinear Schrodinger - Gross Pitaevskii (NLS / GP) equations from the quantum
N body problem (speaker: Benjamin Schlein): This bridged the mathematical physics community, versed
in the quantum N - body problem with the nonlinear PDE and nonlinear waves community, more familiar
with NLS / GP as a mathematical description of optical and hydrodynamic phenomena.
1

(II) Pore Formation in Polymer Electrolytes (speaker: Keith Promislow): This provided an introduction to
an important class of multi-scale problems of huge interest and receiving broad attention, due to applications
to energy problems.

2
2.1

Recent Developments and Open Problems

Nonlinear Optics and Stability Problems

In the last decade the study of variable coefficient generalizations of the basic equations became an active
area. This was motivated by advances in fabrication technology, enabling the design of precision photonic
structures, with applications ranging from optical transmission media, optical storage, pulse compression, or
more generally, light processing, to quantum information science.
For example, in long distance optical fiber communication systems, dispersion management, a prescribed
variation of the dispersion properties of the optical fiber transmission media, gives rise to a class of NLS
equations with time-dependent (periodic, random) coefficients. Also, propagation of light of sufficient intensity in nonlinear and spatially inhomogeneous media as well as the evolution of macroscopic quantum
systems (Bose-Einstein condensates) give rise to PDEs of NLS/GP type with spatially dependent variations
(e.g. compactly supported or periodic) in the linear or nonlinear potentials. Variations in these potentials can
be engineered to influence the dynamics of coherent structures.
Stability properties of coherent structures and variable coefficient extensions of standard PDE theory
have been under separate study for quite some time. Engineering advances, such as dispersion management
in optical fibers and photonic microstructures, motivate studying the interplay between variable coefficients
and stability properties of coherent structures.
A mathematical theory of the stability of soliton-like objects in spatially varying media contributes towards a control theory of these objects required for light processing. Currently, there is a need for links
between pure mathematicians advancing the rigorous understanding of basic model equations and engineers
and applied mathematicians developing new models and applications. One of the goals of this workshop was
to encourage this interaction.

2.2

Many-body quantum mechanics

In 2001, the Nobel prize was given for the first experimental evidence of existence of Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). This discovery generated considerable activity in the study of the evolution of BEC. Mathematical
physicists derived rigorously macroscopic evolution equations for interacting many body systems. For example, the nonlinear Schrodinger equation and nonlinear Hartree-Fock equations have been rigorously derived
as mean field limits of interacting Bose gases.

2.3

Fundamental PDE problems

Wave maps and Schrodinger maps are fundamental objects of study in modern PDE analysis. These are
natural generalizations of the classical wave equations and Schrodinger equations to non-Euclidean spaces.
Wave maps also arise as approximations of Einsteins equations of general relativity.
Dispersive estimates have been an active area of research for a few decades. More recently the emphasis
is on Strichartz estimates on non-Euclidean manifolds and with additional terms, e.g. magnetic or potential
field.

3
3.1

Presentation Highlights
Application in optics, stability problems

Gadi Fibich described construction of singular solutions of nonlinear evolution equations that become singular on a sphere. The asymptotic profile and blowup rate of these solutions are the same as those of solutions
of the corresponding one-dimensional equation that become singular at a point. These results were obtained
for the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, the biharmonic nonlinear Schrodinger equation, the nonlinear heat
equation, and the nonlinear biharmonic heat equation.

Jared Bronski considered periodic solutions to equations of Korteweg-de Vries type. The stability of
periodic wave nonlinear wave-trains is a fundamental problem, whose analytical theory is far less developed
that of the solitary wave stability, due to significant mathematical challenges and new phenomena.
Bronski demonstrated a proof of an index theorem giving an exact count of the number of unstable
eigenvalues of the linearized operator in terms of the number of zeros of the derivative of the traveling wave
profile together with geometric information about a certain map between the constants of integration of the
ordinary differential equation and the conserved quantities of the partial differential equation. This index can
be regarded as a generalization of both the Sturm oscillation theorem and the classical Lyapunov stability
theory for solitary wave solutions for equations of Korteweg-de Vries type (Benjamin, Bona-SouganidisStrauss, Weinstein, . . . )
In the case of a polynomial nonlinearity this index, together with a related one introduced earlier by
Bronski and Johnson, could be expressed in terms of derivatives of hyperelliptic integrals on a finite genus
Riemann surface. Since these hyperelliptic integrals satisfy a Picard-Fuchs relation these derivatives can be
expressed in terms of the integrals themselves, leading to a closed-form expression in terms of a finite number
of moments of the solution.

Boaz Ilan described band-edge solitons of Nonlinear Schrodinger equations with periodic potentials (joint
work with M.I. Weinstein). Nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) / Gross-Pitaveskii equations with periodic potentials admit positive bound states (solitons). For focusing nonlinearities these solitons bifurcate from the zero
state with frequencies (propagation constant) lying in the semi-infinite spectral gap and near the spectral
band edge. A multiple scale expansion leads to a constant coefficient homogenized / effective medium NLS
equation that depends on the band-edge Bloch wave through an effective-mass tensor and nonlinear coupling
constant. The multiple scales argument is made rigorous via a Lyapunov Schmidt reduction to Bloch-modes
sufficiently near the spectral band edge. To leading order the soliton is constructed from the Bloch wave that
is slowly modulated by a ground state of the homogenized equation. In the L2 -critical case, for any nonconstant periodic potential the power (L2 norm) of the soliton is strictly lower than the power of the Townes
mode, which has the critical power for collapse. The implications to collapse dynamics and self-focusing
instability were elucidated using computations of bound states and direct computations of critical NLS equations in 1D and 2D.

Milena Stanislavova presented conditional stability theorems for Klein-Gordon type equations. She considered positive, radial and exponentially decaying steady state solutions of the Klein-Gordon equation with
various power nonlinearities. The main result was a precise construction of infinite-dimensional invariant
manifolds in the vicinity of these solutions. The precise center-stable manifold theorem for the Klein-Gordon
equation includes the co-dimension of the manifold, a formula for the asymptotic phase and the decay rates
for even perturbations.

Yoshio Tsutsumi gave a presentation on stability of cavity soliton for the Lugiato-Lefever equation with
additive noise. He considered the stability of stationary solution for the Lugiato-Lefever (LL) equation
with periodic boundary condition under perturbation of additive noise. The LL- equation is a nonlinear

Schrodinger equation with damping and spatially homogeneous forcing terms, which describes a physical
model of a unidirectional ring or Fabry-Perot cavity with plane mirrors containing a Kerr medium driven by
a coherent plane-wave field. The stationary solution of (LL) is called a Cavity Sliton. Tsutusmi showed
the stability of certain stationary solutions under the perturbation of additive noise from a viewpoint of the
Freidlin-Wentzell type large deviation principle.

Roy Goodman described bifurcations of nonlinear defect modes. The nonlinear coupled mode equations
describe the evolution of light in Bragg grating optical fibers. Defects (localized potentials) can be added to
the fiber in order to trap light at a specialized location as a nonlinear defect mode. In numerical simulations
these defect modes are seen to lose (linear) stability through several types of bifurcations. Inverse scattering
is used to design defects in which the bifurcations can be easily observed and studied via the derivation of
finite-dimensional reduced equations. Goodman gave conditions for the existence of Hamiltonian pitchfork
and Hamiltonian Hopf bifurcations.

Bjorn Sandstede gave a presentation on pointwise estimates and nonlinear stability of waves. Over the
past decade, pointwise Greens function estimates have proved very useful in establishing nonlinear stability
of viscous shock profiles under the assumption of spectral stability. He reported here on recent work with
Beck and Zumbrun on extending this approach to the nonlinear stability of time-periodic viscous shocks. Key
to the derivation of the required pointwise bounds in the time-periodic setting are meromorphic extensions
of exponential dichotomies of appropriate time-periodic eigenvalue problems. He also showed how spectral
stability of weakly time-periodic shocks can be established near Hopf bifurcation using a spatial-dynamics
approach. The motivation for this work comes from sources in reaction-diffusion systems. He also outlined
the challenges and hopes for nonlinear stability proofs in this context.

Justin Holmer considered dynamics of KdV solitons in the presence of a slowly varying potential. He
studied the dynamics of solitons as solutions to the perturbed KdV (pKdV) equation t u = x (x2 u +
3u2 bu), where b(x, t) = b0 (hx, ht), h  1 is a slowly varying potential. This result refined earlier
work of Dejak-Sigal and an estimate on the trajectory of the soliton parameters of scale and position was
obtained. In addition to the Lyapunov analysis commonly applied to these problems, a local virial estimate
due to Martel-Merle was used. The proof did not rely on the inverse scattering machinery and could be expected to carry through for the L2 subcritical gKdV-p equation, 1 < p < 5. The case of p = 3, the modified
Korteweg-de Vries (mKdV) equation, is structurally simpler and more precise results can be obtained by the
method of Holmer-Zworski. This was joint work with Galina Perelman.

Eduard Kirr considered asymptotic stability of nonlinear bound states and resonances for nonlinear
Schrodinger equations with subcritical nonlinearities. What makes the extension to the subcritical case possible is his recent method for obtaining dispersive estimates for perturbations of linear Schrodinger operators
with time-dependent and spatially localized coefficients. The method currently works in dimensions two and
higher. Kirr discussed obstacles in extending his method to one space dimension. Also some applications to
nonlinear equations, in particular to asymptotic stability and radiative damping of ground states in NLS were
presented.

Gideon Simpson presented a poster on numerical simulations of the energy-supercritical NLS equation.
These computations were motivated by recent works of Kenig-Merle and Kilip-Visan who considered some
energy supercritical wave equations and proved that if the solution is a priori bounded in the critical Sobolev
space (i.e. the space whose homogeneous norm is invariant under the scaling leaving the equation invariant),
then it exists for all time and scatters. Simpson numerically investigated the boundedness of the H 2 -critical
Sobolev norm for solutions of the NLS equation in dimension five with quintic nonlinearity. It was found that
for a class of initial conditions, this norm remains bounded, the solution exists for long time, and it scatters

(disperses to zero).

Young-Ran Lee presented a proof of exponential decay of dispersion managed solitons with vanishing
average dispersion. It was shown that any L2 solution of the Gabitov-Turitsyn equation describing dispersion
managed solitons with zero average dispersion decays exponentially in space and frequency domains. This
confirmed in the affirmative Lushnikovs conjecture of exponential decay of dispersion managed solitons.
This work was done jointly with M. Burak Erdogan and Dirk Hundertmark.

3.2

Many-body quantum mechanics

Benjamin Schlein gave a two-hour tutorial on derivation of equations of nonlinear Schrodinger / GrossPitaevskii type as the mean field limit of N-body quantum problems, as N . In particular, he showed
that the nonlinear Hartree equation can be used to describe the macroscopic properties of the evolution of a
many body system in the so called mean field limit. He also explained how Gross-Pitaevskii equation, a cubic
nonlinear Schrodinger equation, can be used to describe the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates.

Mathieu Lewin considered variational models for infinite quantum systems with an example of the crystal
with defects. Describing quantum particles in a quantum medium often leads to strongly indefinite (sometimes unbounded from below) theories, for which it is usually quite hard to establish the existence and the
stability of bound states. Two well-known, important examples are relativistic electrons described by the
Dirac operator and electrons close to a defect in a quantum crystal. Lewin presented a new method for constructing and studying a variational model for such systems. He concentrated on the Hartree model for the
crystal with a defect.
The main idea is to describe at the same time the electrons bound by the defect and the (nonlinear)
behavior of the infinite crystal. This leads to a (rather peculiar) bounded-below nonlinear functional whose
variable is however an operator of infinite-rank.
Lewin introduced the appropriate functional analytic setting, stated the existence of global-in-time solutions to the associated time-dependent Schrodinger equation, and discussed the existence, properties and the
stability of bound states.

Walid K. Abou Salem presented microscopic derivation of the magnetic Hartree equation. He discussed
the rigorous derivation of the time-dependent Hartree equation in the presence of magnetic potentials. He
also remarked on how to extend the analysis to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.

Natasa Pavlovic discussed the quintic NLS as the mean field limit of a Boson gas with three-body interactions. She described the dynamics of a boson gas with three-body interactions in dimensions d=1,2. She
and her collaborator, Thomas Chen, prove that in the limit as the particle number N tends to infinity, the
BBGKY hierarchy of k-particle marginals converges to a limiting Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) hierarchy for which
they proved existence and uniqueness of solutions. For factorized initial data, the solutions of the GP hierarchy are shown to be determined by solutions of a quintic nonlinear Schrodinger equation. This was joint
work with Thomas Chen.

Thomas Chen discussed some recent developments on the well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for
focusing and defocusing GP hierarchies. He surveyed some recent results, all from joint works with Natasa
Pavlovic, related to the Cauchy problem for the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) hierarchy. First, he addressed the local
well-posedness theory, in various dimensions, for the cubic and quintic case. He then introduced new conserved energy functionals which were used in the following contexts: (1) In a joint work with N. Tzirakis,
to prove, on the L2 critical and supercritical level, that solutions of focusing GP hierarchies with a negative
average energy per particle blow up in finite time. (2) To prove the global well-posedness of the Cauchy

problem for energy subcritical, defocusing GP hierarchies, based on the conservation of higher order energy
functionals. (3) To prove global well-posedness of focusing and defocusing GP hierarchies on the L2 subcritical level, based on a generalization of the Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities which they establish for density
matrices.

Manoussos Grillakis spoke on precise N dependent error bounds, satisfied by the NLS / GP approximation to mean-field scaled quantum N body problem, for large N .

3.3

Fundamental problems in PDE analysis

Wilhelm Schlag gave a presentation on inverse square potentials and applications. He discussed some recent
work on dispersive estimates on a curved background. These problems arise in geometry and physics, and
are reduced for fixed angular momentum to a one-dimensional problem with an inverse square potential. For
the Schwarzschild case, one obtains local pointwise decay rates which increase with the angular momentum.
This was joint work with R. Donninger, A. Soffer, and W. Staubach.

Daniel Tataru presented his recent result on large data wave maps. He proved for large data wave maps
from R2+1 into a compact Riemmanian manifold, the following dichotomy: either a solution is global and
dispersive, or a soliton like concentration must occur. This was joint work with Jacob Sterbenz.

3.4

Energy conversion

Keith Promislow gave tutorial on Pore Formation in Polymer Electrolytes. The efficient conversion of energy
from chemical and photonic forms to useful electric voltage requires the development of nanostructured materials with interpercolating structure. In practical applications this is achieved by functionalizing polymers,
attaching acid groups to short side chains which extend from long, hydrophobic polymer backbones. When
placed in solvent, these functionalized polymers form nanoscale solvent-filled pores lined with the tips of the
acid groups, and ideal environment for the selective conduction of properly charged ions.
He presented a family of models, which we call functionalized Lagrangians, which mimic the energy
landscape of the functionalized polymer/solvent mixtures. The functionalized energies are higher order, and
strongly nonlinear, but with special structure which renders them amenable to analysis. He outlined the properties of the functionalized Lagrangians, and the multi-stage structure of the associated gradient flows.

3.5

Geometric PDEs

Stephen Gustafson gave a talk on Schrodinger and Landau-Lifshitz maps of low degree. The Schrodinger
(and Landau-Lifshitz) map equations are a basic model in ferromagnetism, and a natural geometric (hence
nonlinear) version of the Schrodinger (and Schrodinger-heat) equation. While there has been recent progress
on the question of singularity formation for the wave and heat analogues (wave map and harmonic map heatflow), the Schrodinger case seems more elusive. He presented results on global regularity and long-time
dynamics for equivariant maps with near-minimal energy. He emphasized lower degree (2 and 3) maps, for
which the analysis is trickier, and the dynamics more complex, phenomena related to slower spatial decay of
certain eigenfunctions. This was joint work with K. Nakanishi, and T.-P. Tsai.